In order to appreciate Eyewitness, aka The Janitor, you need to suspend your disbelief. And then do it again. And yet again. Because there are far too many implausible aspects to this Peter Yates-directed thriller to make it anything other than a mere curiosity.

As in the sense of: how did the filmmakers think that many audiences were going to react to the unlikely romance between a janitor who lives with his vicious attack dog in a small untidy apartment and a wealthy, New York society news anchorwoman? And did they really think that Christopher Plummer was the best actor to portray an Israeli agent – one, I should add, who can’t seem to hold his own against a janitor?

Then there’s the plot. (Spoilers Ahead!) Daryll Deever (William Hurt) and his best friend Aldo (James Woods) are Vietnam veterans working as janitors in New York City. Their boss is a Vietnamese guy who was on the opposite side during the war. When he gets murdered, Darryl pretends he knows more about the crime than he really does so he can get close to TV journalist Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver), who is investigating the story.

What charms her most is when he tells her he’s been her greatest fan for years and is consumed with her and how much he loves her. She’s so taken by this obsessive janitor that she’s ready to leave her urbane Israeli fiancé Joseph (Plummer) who, to everyone’s surprise – or not, is an Israeli secret agent. Lo and behold, it turns out that Joseph is the one who murdered Darryl’s boss. You see, until then everyone thought it had to be Aldo because he hates Asian people so much. That’s why he lives in Chinatown, of course.

Roger Ebert liked this movie a lot more than I did, arguing that all of the things that I found absurd to be indicative of the film’s playing with audience expectations. There’s nothing wrong with playing with expectations, of course. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think it’s more of a case of a horribly miscast film and a romance at the heart of it that really doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Indeed, the best line in the whole film is when Aldo screams at Darryl saying that this whole romance is absurd because Darryl is just a janitor. If that was in the script, then I’ll give the screenwriter and director credit for some self-awareness. But part of me thinks it was Woods, at his unhinged best, ad-libbing. Final note: look for Steven Hill and Morgan Freeman portraying a pair of world-weary cops working the case. As much as I didn’t care for Eyewitness, I’d watch a movie with these two any day.

Howdy! I remember I watched this movie many years back in my teens, I watched it for Ms Weaver at that time I like Her, but not anymore, do not know what happen, maybe it is Her politics or something else, but as I grew older and more mature I lost interest in Her, and besides I am more in the classic movies that the most modern one, I know this movie was in 1981(I was 14 back then) but movies I am more interested in are the ones starting in the 1915 to 1979 except for the James Bond Movies(I am still following what is happening with that Series) but the rest of Hollywood now I cut the cord or the string pretty much. That movie is far fetched just like James Bond or Spoof of that genre. Have a super day.

I saw this when it came out and didn’t like it. A few months back, given my fondness for the leads (won’t say Yates is a favorite, but he did direct one of my favorite films, The Deep), I gave it another try…and still didn’t like it. This post admirably sums up the surfeit of implausibility and coincidence that explains why. I’m as willing to suspend my disbelief as the next guy, but after a while, you just feel like your intelligence is being insulted. Since I also disliked screenwriter Steve Tesich’s Four Friends, and thought his Breaking Away was overrated, the source of the problem would appear to be clear.